Louisa Hawkins Canby

Before General Edward Canby ordered his troops to retreat from Santa Fe, he instructed them to destroy or hide all essential supplies such as food, equipment, and blankets to hinder the Confederate soldiers.

Louisa's younger brother, John Parker Hawkins, was a West Point graduate who served during the Civil War, eventually retiring as a brigadier general in 1894.

[citation needed] In his memoirs, William Tecumseh Sherman recalls Louisa, Edward, and their daughter Mary's arrival in Monterey, California in early 1849.

There, Louisa met Lt. Col. Henry Stanton Burton, a Protestant who became involved in controversy when he proposed marriage to Maria Amparo Ruiz, a Roman Catholic and the granddaughter of the former Mexican governor of Baja California.

Edward, who had begun a tour of northern California on July 2 and did not return to Monterey until August 9, was forced to explain that he had taken no part in the affair and that his wife, a civilian, had acted alone.

[citation needed] In January 1862, Henry Hopkins Sibley, who had recently been promoted to brigadier general, led a Confederate brigade into New Mexico Territory and began marching up the Rio Grande toward Colorado.

Col. Canby was in charge of the defense of the entire territory, which included what is today the states of Arizona and New Mexico, as well as the southern tip of Nevada and parts of modern-day Colorado.

The federal army and territorial government had evacuated the capital, burning or hiding any supplies they were unable to carry with them to Fort Union, northeast of Santa Fe.

The Confederate soldiers who entered Santa Fe on March 10, 1862, were welcomed by the wives of Union officers, led by the wife of Colonel Edward Canby.

She led a company of nurses to care for the sick and dying men and made trips to outlying encampments to bring her patients into Santa Fe or treat in situ those soldiers who could not be brought into the city.

Louisa traveled with him, where he spent more than a year in bureaucratic service in Pennsylvania, New York, and Washington, D.C., sometimes as an unofficial administrative assistant to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.